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College appoints Acting Principal

The Archbishop of Wales has appointed Rev. Dr. Mark Clavier as Acting Principal of St. Michael’s College, Cardiff.

Dr Clavier who joined the theological college last year as Dean of Residential Training, will take up the role following the retirement of the Principal, Canon Dr Peter Sedgwick, at the end of June.

The Archbishop, Dr Barry Morgan, said “After consulting both my fellow bishops and the college staff I am pleased to announce the appointment of the Rev’d Dr Mark Clavier as Acting Principal of St Michael’s College. Dr Clavier is highly thought of both by his colleagues and students in the short period he has been at St Michael’s. He will bring his considerable academic, pastoral and spiritual gifts to the position and I am delighted he has accepted it. ”

Canon Sedgwick added, “Mark has strengthened the community spirit enormously, and emphasized our Anglican identity. He will be a wonderful leader for the college. His warmth and energy has already made a great difference to all of us.”

Dr. Clavier, who has previously served as a parish priest in Oxfordshire, said “I’m both astonished and delighted to have been asked to become the Acting Principal. I’m very grateful to my colleagues, the Archbishop, and the College Committee for their confidence. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a great passion for theological formation within the Church. I am, therefore, looking forward to working alongside my colleagues here at St Michael’s College and within the wider Church in Wales to propose a programme for formation that will inspire people, root them deeply within a vibrant Anglican identity, and nurture the kind of active, imaginative, faith-filled, and loving disciples that our Church so badly needs. We desperately need to confront the ‘narrative of decline’ in the Church; it is my conviction, and will central to my role here, that this rediscovery of the ‘Gospel of Hope’ must begin with formation.”

Dr Clavier, 43, spent 12 years serving parishes in Maryland and North Carolina before moving to England nearly five years ago. He joined the college last Easter having spent three years as a ‘house for duty priest’ in former mining villages in County Durham and a year as Priest-in-Charge of three churches at Steeple Aston, North Aston and Tackley in the diocese of Oxford.